[Closed] How do you ride off drops?

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in at the deep end....

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Might be more an courage wolf, that.

[URL= http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i264/Northwindlowlander/60400794_zpsuqk5scar.jp g" target="_blank">http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i264/Northwindlowlander/60400794_zpsuqk5scar.jp g"/> [/IMG][/URL]

...then have pudding...

mtbel doesn't ride off drops, the earth drops away from him.

Euro

Depends what you mean by 'permanent'. If you mean forever then you're correct. If you mean a few dozen metres then with a bit of practice it's very possible (I do have long arms but then i have long legs too, what with me being long and all - see fig. 1.).

Again, the difference between moving your mass dynamically and statically.

As i have shown a normal sized mountain bike is simply too big to statically completely unweight the front wheel (ie to keep the front wheel off the floor continuously) You can easily try this yourself next time you ride your bike. Roll along at a nice stable low speed, say just above warking pace. Drop your seat out the way, and slwoly push yourself off the back off the bike as much as you can. Completely straight arms and legs, rub the back of the back tyre with your groin!

And what happens when you do this? Nothing. Because the mass of your arms and legs is still forwards, and the bikes own CofG is between it's axles, the fork extends a bit, but the front wheel doesn't leave the ground.

If you have a BMX, repeat the test. This time, because the bike is a lot smaller compared to you, the front wheel does leave the ground (probably leaving you sat on your ass behind it 😉

So, to permanently flat land manual a full sized mountain bike, you DO need to shorten the wheelbase by tilting the bike upwards, as in the pics i posted on page 2. Luckily, to do this, you can use your INERTIA (not your mass) to help. By pushing forward and through with your heals, the lighter bike moves forward, and you bodies inertia means you don't move backwards as quickly. if at the same time you pump the front of the bike (again, using your inertia (effectively your dynamic mass) downwards and let it rebound, then up you go into a "tall" manual. With the bike angled up, and acting as one side of the triangle, you have effectively shortened it's wheelbase and seatstay length, meaning you can get your combined CofG over the rear wheel contact patch.

Also critical to note is that by rotating with the bike, with straight arms, you have concentrated your mass into the vertical plane, as you back becomes perpendicular to the ground. As such, this means you have a great ability to move your CofG forwards and rearwards to control the balance point by extending / shortening your LEGS (not your arms!)

SOAP
trying to tell your partner how to do stuff is not the easiest. As you can soon become a know it all.
Here's a vid of her at BPW.

No trolley action going on.

You know what, with just a little pump/push before the lip of those drops, she'd be smashing those! 😉 You can see the front drop and the rear kick a bit which leaves her a little unbalanced on landing, but at the speed she's going, it would only take a tiny pump to get her into a perfect trajectory off those!

Because those drops are small, and the landing basically flat, she doesn't need at do any great exaggerated movement or hang off the back or whatever.

I like the simple "pump the front wheel over a stick" (copyright Jedi!) exercise, as that's all she would need to be nailing that bit of trail 😉

As i have shown

You are correct that a longer wheelbase makes the move slightly more difficult but as we don't all ride around on bikes with Steve Jones/Chris Porter approved battleship wheelbases (yet? 🙄 ) it is still possible on an mtb.

You can type as much theory on the subject as you want but the Fact here is that I can manage it just fine on all my MTBs. All 7 bikes are 26" wheel with wheelbases ranging from 42" -46" and stays ranging from 16"-17.25. I'm 5'11" with a 33" inseam if you want to geek out on the theory to try and disprove something I regularly manage just fine.

I've noticed that when the "pro's" are riding for speed, they push the front end down over the drop (like in that vid on the first page by Fabien Barel), I guess to keep the wheels on the ground and maintain control, matching the angle of the bike to the shape of the terrain.

Danny Heart does it at 0.26 here;

Yeah squashing it, check out the Peaty video I posted earlier. It all depends whether it's faster to have the wheels on the ground or faster to launch over trail obstacles.

Danny Hart also manuals off drops and rear wheel lands more than most top 10 WCers.

Re pic. Just nose it in slightly to make sure you're well into the landing.

mtbel
You haven't "shown" shit.
You are correct that a longer wheelbase makes the move slightly more difficult but as we don't all ride around on bikes with Steve Jones/Chris Porter approved battleship wheelbases (yet? ) it is still possible on an mtb.

You can type as much theory on the subject as you want but the Fact here is that I can manage it just fine on all my MTBs. All 7 bikes are 26" wheel with wheelbases ranging from 42" -46" and stays ranging from 16"-17.25. I'm 5'11" with a 33" inseam if you want to geek out on the theory to try and disprove something I regularly manage just fine.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and just assume you aren't understanding what i am saying, so here's you chance to show me.

Get a video of yourself, doing a flat land manual on a full sized MTB, for more than a few feet (lets say do it for 25m) distance, without tilting the bike upwards, ie with your front wheel just 1" off the ground the whole time. Post the video up here and lets see if you can break the laws of physics! 😉

(Please note, i am NOT saying you can't flat land manual on an MTB, of course you can, but unlike on a BMX you need to tilt the bike upwards to do it continuously (as apposed to transiently))

No. how about you come here and I'll show you?

make the vid
make the vid
make the vid

Sod teaching the Mrs I wanna see this video aswell.
Mtbel I heard you taught Danny hart..

The only manual I can do is about 1" off the ground, what do I win?

More to the point, if I know someone who definitely can do it, what do I win?

Can you two just agree to disagree.....

Then the rest of us can agree to disagree with mtroll and we'll go with the balance of opinion.

bigjim
More to the point, if I know someone who definitely can do it, what do I win?

You get (well, they get) to have the official SingleTrack Forum "I'm Awesome" badge for a week....

DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!

mrhoppy
Can you two just agree to disagree.....

Listen dude, we are TRYING to have an argument here, and the last thing we need is you barging in and coming over all Kofi Annan on us eh!!

😉

(ps that^^^^ sounds VERY wrong)

😆

Stick your arse out love and follow me. Worked for my Mrs.

My tuppeneth...

I like the saying 'fill the space' & landing slightly front wheel space is smoother.

I accept that there are occasions when landing rear wheel is a necessity to clear potential obsticles & sadly I'm not awsome

I wouldn't normally do this but I have to agree with mtbel... It doesn't take an advanced grasp of physics to work out that a full-sized human can manual a MTB continuously with the front wheel only just off the ground - you are MUCH heavier than your bike. Assume your wheelbase is 1.2m. Assume your bike weighs 15kg. The torque around the rear axle keeping the front wheel on the ground is ~90Nm (1.2/2)x(15x10).

Assume the rider weighs 70kg. That's 700N of downwards force from gravity. To counterbalance the bike you need to get your centre of mass (90/700)m behind the rear axle. That's 13cm. Does anyone here honestly think they can't manage that?!!

By the way, I've seen two good videos showing exactly how not to ride off a drop. One featured me but I'll be damned if I can find the other... If anyone knows the one I mean, post it up here! They're both very instructive.

Back to the original question, by accident usually 🙂

Chief, your "basic physics", the calculation of torque is completely correct. However, the basic anatomy of a human being means you cannot get your CofG "behind" the rear axle centre line without tilting the bike upwards to quite a steep angle (for a full sized MTB, again, you can on a much smaller BMX or trials bike etc). The issues is that our limbs are a fair proportion of our body mass, so yes, as you "stick your ass" off the back of the bike, the mass of your torso moves backwards, but your limbs are stretched out forwards, and so that results in your CofG remaining fairly well forwards.

so in your example, you can't move "all" 70kg of you backwards, you end up leaving 15kg of arms and probably 30kg of legs forwards, and that means you have to get your torso a LONG way back to counterbalance the bikes mass, and as i have said numerous times, unless you ride an BMX or have arms like Mr Tickle, that just isn't going to happen.

Look at any of the millions of pics and videos of people doing flat land manuals on MTBs and ALL of them will have the bike tilted up at around 45deg from the horizontal to both effectively shorten the bikes wheel base and to help get the riders CofG "backk" further

Look at any of the millions of pics and videos of people doing flat land manuals on MTBs and ALL of them will have the bike tilted up at around 45deg from the horizontal to both effectively shorten the bikes wheel base and to help get the riders CofG "backk" further

It's cos they're all newbs and they cheat by feathering their rear brakes. Brakeless manual = lower front end.

Ha ha.. so this still has legs 😆

basic anatomy of a human being means you cannot get your CofG "behind" the rear axle centre line without tilting the bike upwards to quite a steep angle

Do you have really poor flexibility or something Max? (ie. do you find it difficult to touch your toes?).
To get your CoG back far enough, what is needed is decent enough lower back flexibility to get really low hanging back off the bars and trust me, this is possible on a standard mtb wheelbase.
I have no interest in looking at ANY videos or PICs as I can already achieve what you seem to deem impossible.

my BMX chainstays are 14.5"
my hardtails chainstays 16-17"
and there's only an inch difference between TT lengths.
with my 33" inseam I truly don't find it too difficult to get my CoG far enough back.

I'm not sure why you are finding this so difficult to believe.

DT is correct. I don't ever use my rear brake to manual

Come on then, the entire internet is out there, all you need to do is link to a picture or even better a video, of someone on a full sized MTB doing a continous flat land manual with the front wheel just 1" off the ground.

All this whiny "oh i'm not going to link any pics of take any videos" is just proving my point. It's just a bicycle, if it can be done, there will be a pic of someone online doing it.......

Here's some people doing MTB manuals as reference with the bike tiled upwards:

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in everyone, they have had to lift the front wheel at least 1foot off the ground in order to get their back, and hence their CofG far enough backwards

Here's someone not manualing

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Take a look at that last pic by comparison, and it's clear that they will never get their C0fG far enough backwards by just straightening their arms and "hanging off the back"

Oh.. you're an internet cyclist? I see now 🙄

Stop avoiding the question.

Since you're clearly such an awesome rider, simply post a video of you, flat land manualing your mtb for all to see. If you can't do this, shut up.

TBF if the poor fellow in your last pic is trying to manual he looks like a retard.
his seat is far too high

do you even ride dude?

I have no interest in making or starring in videos just riding bikes and occasionally discussing it, even with folk who just watch videos of it.

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I'll take that as a no then........

Here's me, on my c456, and yes, funnily enough, my back is straight, my CofG is vertically down and the bike is necessarily tilted upwards, and hence balanced on just the rear wheel:

[URL= http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q137/max_torque_2006/OnOne_c456/c456_PH_hop_1_zps0487a593.jp g" target="_blank">http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q137/max_torque_2006/OnOne_c456/c456_PH_hop_1_zps0487a593.jp g"/> [/IMG][/URL]

in this case, i'm actually stationary, starting a pedal hop, but the positionm other than being a bit taller, is much the same as for a flat land manual.

I didn't think I needed to cover basic anatomy as well! The bulk of a human's mass is concentrated between knees and shoulders. If you can't get your hips back level with the back of your rear tyre then your riding is being limited by a lack of flexibility.

Come on then, the entire internet is out there, all you need to do is link to a picture or even better a video,

Max, all those photos prove my point! They simply need to hinge more at their hips to shift their CoM further back whilst allowing their arms the extra reach to let the front wheel come down, whilst remaining balanced.

If someone wants to put some pics on the interweb of how to manual then why would you show the bike with the front tyre almost on the floor?! Hence the bikes looking like they do.

All those riders could continue their manuals with their hips back a bit more and their bars forward and down.

I never profess to being an amazing rider.

But i am smart enough to understand how a persons anatomic layout affects the way one should ride a bike.

So how come not one person in the entire world has posted a pic of them doing what is becoming the "STW manual" then??

in this case, i'm actually stationary, starting a pedal hop, but the positionm other than being a bit taller, is much the same as for a flat land manual.

😀 Sorry Max, but you're clearly trolling. In that other thread you wanted to know how long it'd take to achieve awesome skills. And then you post a pic of you getting into a shape only most STWers could dream of.

But i am smart enough to understand how a persons anatomic layout affects the way one should ride a bike.

Here's me, on my c456

hah ha ha ha aha ha...

That right there is GOLD! 😆

Surely youd need mr tickle arms to be far enough back and holding the bars?

The king of the manual couldnt eek it out.

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/chris-smith-world-record-manual-2014.html

What does he^^ know, it's not like he's a world record manualist now is he. Oh, wait a minute....... 😉

I never profess to being an amazing rider.

How does pointing out that you need to tilt an MTB to manual it require me to be a Red Bull Rampage standard rider?

mtbel

That right there is GOLD!

Since you obviously like a laugh, here i am not on the internet, actually riding a bike and manualing again(still got the bike tilted upwards, sorry)

[URL= http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q137/max_torque_2006/Lapierre%20Zesty%20714/UKBikeSkills_manual_cropgs_zps86abc329.jp g" target="_blank">http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q137/max_torque_2006/Lapierre%20Zesty%20714/UKBikeSkills_manual_cropgs_zps86abc329.jp g"/> [/IMG][/URL]

😉

Pedals not in a good position for pedal kick in that picture.
[url= http://www.trashzen.com/pedal-kick-basics.php ]have a look here [/url]

Back to the OP...as the wife of someone who can do drops, I did the 'imagine pushing a trolley off a cliff' thing today and have to say, it did work. Some progress and still a long way off manuals, so away from discussions of centre of gravity, this mental prompt certainly had some benefits.

the positionm other than being a bit taller, is much the same as for a flat land manual.

..nah.

maxtorque - Member

So how come not one person in the entire world has posted a pic of them doing what is becoming the "STW manual" then??

GW doesn't bullshit about his riding, he doesn't need to. But I think he'd struggle to do this manual while also taking a photo. And even then you'd say "It's a still, proves nothing, you couldn't possibly have held it there, because biology"

What do you think the chris smith vid proves? He's not out to keep his wheel low, why would he? He's going for distance so he's making it simple.

So now NW is in on the trolling too. This is getting really entertaining. 🙂

Thread closed.....go home people.....nothing more to see here (god I miss Jamie).

Took ages to work out what you were all arguing about.

On my BMX, maybe even my DJ, i "can" (i mean could) manual indefinitely with the front wheel an inch off the floor, you get really low and far back, the further forward you are, the higher you need the front to balance out the moments.

If i could get as low and far back on my 29er, im sure i could repeat the same 1" high manual, but there's a wheel in the way of my gooch.

Also, my taller BMX friends tended to manual with the front wheel lower, their COG was typically further back due to the longer limbs. It would start further back, to pop front end up, it relies on rate in change of COG to pull the front up, they'd start closer to the limit of displacement, so would normally end up closer to the limit, ie further back in the manual, leaving the front wheel lower.

Conclusion, yes you can manual a MTB with the front wheel an inch off the floor, if your limbs are long enough to clear the rear wheel, i dont think it has anything to do with the moments, purely there being a rear wheel in the way.

Drop, if i can, i just go fast and pull up like i would on a jump, i tend to boost them, if im likely to overshoot, i pump down off of it like you would the back side of a roller, into a steep back or a jump landing. I guess the second method is like the shopping trolley thing, but i see it as the more advanced of the two. I'd just start out getting good at manuals, then proper bunny hops on flat ground, then you really master the fore/aft balance thing before introducing danger.

I'm lost. If I want to do a drop do I need to be able to manual first?

Or has the answer to the original post been mentioned within the subsequent trolling/pee ing contest and I missed it?

If in doubt, flat out.

If I want to do a drop do I need to be able to manual first?

No, but i reckon it makes it a whole lot safer.

Otherwise you're just relying on speed to ensure your your rear leaves the drop before you rotate too far forward and go over the bars.

Plus doing it manual style means your legs will be straightish, maximum available suspension available from your body to absorb the impact of landing and stay balanced. Plus you have your full range of movement to correct yourself if the landing is a bit sketchy.

Without doing it, you land, your weight is forward, the travel on your forks is used up, your body is in a bad position to deal with anything on landing, just a recipe for screwing up really.

jam bo - Member
If in doubt, flat out.

If I want to do a drop do I need to be able to manual first?

I can't manual for toffee but have no problem riding off drops.

You're not

Otherwise you're just relying on speed to ensure your your rear leaves the drop before you rotate too far forward and go over the bars.

Without doing it, you land, your weight is forward, the travel on your forks is used up, your body is in a bad position to deal with anything on landing, just a recipe for screwing up really.

This might be true if you take off with your weight forward, but not with any sort of proper technique.

Thank you. Listening with interest. I've gone on the basis of speed is my friend, which worked up to a point but still landing too often on the front end, even with getting my hips back, and one significant and a few close OTB moments.

Maybe my forks are too heavy and I need an upgrade. Surely cant be my 'technique'... 😉

whatnobeer - i think we are pretty much agreed here. What you're describing is a manual, well in terms of technique, well the maintaining balance aspect, you may not be able to manual, but by the sounds of it you're doing very much the same thing, well once the front wheel is up and you're in the balance point.

Crux of it is you're manipulating your balance point so that it remains far enough behind the drop edge until the correct time, then when you land, it's ideally both wheels, more rear wheel on a flatter landing, with the best position to deal with landing, which is the best general position, centred on the bike with full range of motion available from the climbs, ready to deal with landing/ground/to set up for the next obstacle.

svalgis - Member

So now NW is in on the trolling too. This is getting really entertaining.

I'm sitting this one out because I'm shit at manualling 😆

4.5 pages of BS and all we have is shopping trolley and pumping over a stick.
The Mrs ain't manualling. End of. 🙂

Manuals are easier for women as a higher proportion of their weight is in their rear. And that is an internet fact 🙂

@SOAP, let the other half read the thread.. should make anyone drop off

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